


off-hours

by dashcommaslash



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), London Spy
Genre: Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Dreams, Fix-It, M/M, Q fixes London spy, Q is definitely Alex's boss, Q is kind of Alex's boss, Unconventional Happy Ending, but they do have soulmates, casual ill-advised office fling, god help me, knowing me probably some BDSM, not not 00q, not soulmates, q is more of a dick than in my usual head canon but he does have feelings, this is what I am writing in the cab to the airport instead of the paper I am giving tomorrow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-06-07 19:18:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6820786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dashcommaslash/pseuds/dashcommaslash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Q fraternizes and has a series of weird dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Because I am not going to pretend the plot of London Spy made an ounce of fucking sense.
> 
> Sorry about the formatting--posting this from my cell phone.

"Alex, please," says the agent.  
"Alex, then," says Q.

************************

That night Q has a very odd dream. In the dream, he is back in the flat he lived in as a grad student, and he is kneeling on the tatty covers and sucking Alex's cock. That's not the odd bit. Alex is very fit, and Q has, of course, sucked any number of cocks in any number of awful flats. Alex is silent but his thighs are flexing, one hand is in Q's hair, he's breathing like he's been shot, he's biting the back of his forearm. That's not the odd bit, either. That's the kind of fuck he'd be, isn't it--uptight but in the best way, with all sorts of butch hangups for Q to break through. It would take a lot of work to make him talk, but what's easy isn't, in Q's opinion, generally worth doing.

So that's not the odd bit either.

Afterwards, he's telling Alex the story of that night--the bad one--and this version is both better and worse. Alex places their palms together, looks him straight in the face. Q feels very afraid--not of Alex, of something else. That's a bit odd, how clear it is that something bad is coming. Something quite--bad, and it's Q's fault, isn't it--

  
**************************  
"So, Alex, what do you do for fun?" says Q, picking at the cracks in his keyboard with a pair of needle-nosed pliers and listening, with one ear, to 0011 banging his contact in Madrid.

"Fun," says Alex flatly.

"Ah, right," says Q. "I mean, what do you do in your time off? You get sort of regular hours in your division, don't you. Do you have a hobby?" What Q means is _Are you gay_ , but he's trying not to sound like he's hitting on someone several rungs junior to him in front of a dozen other underlings. Instead he just sounds like the kind of supercilious prick who likes to talk about hobbies. Wonderful. He feels intensely irritated that he has to engage in this subterfuge at all when everyone else in the world is so fucking obvious. Why can't Alex give him a clue?

"Ah," says Alex. "Yes. I...try to keep fit. Run. Lift weights. That sort of thing."

"Sleep." Q is cringing. He could have simply read Alex's email, hacked his phone, looked at his porn sites. For Christ's sake.

"Yes."

"For many hours at a time, I suppose."

"Yes." Straight, then?

"Well, that sounds..."

"Dull."

"Lethally," says Q. "Anyway, I need to borrow you, or someone like you, for a few days for a thing for R. We're working on a kind of...I mean, it's basically a gun sort of thing but a little...well, we could use a mathematician."

It's not completely true, but it takes them off the topic of hobbies. The fact is that R could do the whole thing herself but then Q would have to do quite a bit more...supervision of everyone else than he finds wholly commodious to the daily business of thinking. People are R's business.

"To help with your gun."

What? "Yes, that's what--"

"Would you like to have a drink with me?" Alex blurts.

Jesus. Between the two of them they really do have perfect timing. Did he already just ask Alex to work on a project under him? Fantastic.

"Yes, all right," says Q irritably.


	2. Chapter 2

Alex is slightly more forthcoming when off premises, Q finds. Yes, he is gay, but in careful prodding Q can't find anything more serious than some sort of awful artist-waiter type he sees off and on. Reading between the lines, it seems that the sex is good and the conversation centers on the artist's talentless vocation and the unnecessarily tragic (in Q's opinion) lives of his many sisters. And Alex's persistent and unrequited crush on 007, which goes without saying.

As for his own family, Alex says nothing, for which Q is very glad. That sort of thing, he can find out anywhere.  
*************************

That night he dreams about a man he knew vaguely in postgraduate days, a kind of dealer to some of his scene acquaintances, a kind of pimp to others. Q--not yet Q--went to one of his parties with a not-quite-boyfriend and indulged as he so rarely did, and watched practically slack-jawed as Rich--that was the man's name--insinuated himself between two young men a third his age.

"Are you seeing this?" he said to his friend.

"What? Oh, that. Yeah, seems showy, doesn't it? Not too efficient."

"No, more for porn. Is he, what, an exhibitionist, then?"

"How should I know?" said the friend, almost angrily.

"Christ," said Q.

They quarreled over it. It was really nothing much to quarrel over, but it turned everything sour, because just when Q was asking if this was a regular thing, and his not-quite-boyfriend was saying he wasn't aware they were exclusive and he had hoped Q would have notified him if they were because then he could have invested time in teaching Q to rim properly--which Q thought was a joke, although not a very nice one--Rich actually came over, draped his arms around both of them and said, smiling his ostentatiously hideous smile, "Now boys, play nice," and actually started playing with Q's hair as he leaned in to kiss the now soon-to-be-not-quite-ex. Q pulled away in disgust. "Q--" shouted his friend after him, although of course he used a different name, but Q left and walked all the way home. He thought he'd sulk a bit and then answer his calls again, but there were no more calls, so.

Anyway, in the dream Rich keeps merging with that awful prig from the Foreign Office or somewhere who came in to bully Mallory pale and brittle after the recent hearings. Rich is offering Q sex in exchange for information--no, the other way around--and Q is crawling out of his skin again, and then Rich throws him out of a car and says, "You don't think he's really a waiter, do you?"

************************

The next day Q locks himself in his office and downloads some footage and no, Alex's on-again off-again is definitely not really a waiter. This would be ripe for delegation if he wanted anyone to know about it, so he resents the half-hour he spends uploading unsavory illegal pornography from the waiter's phone, at a glacial pace, to a highly trafficked Reddit site, and then for good measure he adds a signature at the bottom of the post with the waiter's real name. Let MI-5 sort that one out.

A week later Alex is glum but resigned.

"Bad run this morning?" says Q. "Something interrupted your sleep?"

Alex smiles, sort of. Another drink, then.

************************

  
This time Q does have to hear about Alex's cold, distant parents but also, interestingly, upon a little prompting, about Alex's late sexual awakening and--in rather halting and tantalizing detail--the guilty fantasies that tormented his long abstinence. Well. People don't confide in Q much, but he supposes if it's all like this he could stand more of it. Then they insult each other's phones for a bit and Alex brushes Q's hair off his forehead. Oh no. Oh, no.

But Q does want coffee, thanks, and Alex's place is (naturally) close and he is a good kisser and isn't even MI-6, technically, so fuck it.

 


	3. Chapter 3

It does take work to pull the sort of noises Q likes out of Alex. Q closes his eyes so he can see with his fingers and feels everything he does like an echo in his own body. He swallows the screams. "What have you done to my skin?", Alex rumbles afterwards, from which Q deduces that, if MI-5's whore was the best of his ilk, then nearly anyone at Six could jump agencies in a heartbeat.   
*************

The next dream is a lot worse.   
**************

"Oh, by the way," says M, as Q gets up to leave his office. "That MI-5 fellow who's been seconded here, Alistair Turner, keep an eye on him, would you?"  
*************

"Listen, Alex," says Q. "Is it possible--"

Alex's back is two golden fields of muscle purpled with Q's marks. He sits hunched and unaware of his beauty. It's distracting. Q runs a finger down his spine. "Look," he starts over, "this thing you're working on--"

"We'll be done soon," says Alex, his eyes closed. "And then you can do what you want with me. Mathematician at your command."

That's hot, but, "No, the other thing," he bites out, and Alex's eyes snap open.

"Yes, that one."

It takes a while to get Alex to admit to what he's doing but Q's seen it, of course. "Don't even think of getting angry with me," he warns, keeping a light grip on Alex's wrist, and he knows Alex knows, they have no right to privacy, nor even to their work, and this, rather than Q's talent for persuasion, is presumably why Alex subsides. "They want me to babysit you while they figure out if you're just experimenting or if you've totally cracked."

"It's useful," says Alex.

"It's a jumped-up lie detector."

"It's the end of all lies," says Alex.

"No, it isn't! There isn't any such bloody thing. And if there were, there would be no fucking Secret Service and no one would ever have gotten a leg over with you. Christ."

Q can see that Alex knows what he means. He huffs a laugh, collapsed onto his back. "It's stupid," he says. "It's a stupid idea. I know that. I just hate--"

"Lies, yeah," says Q. "Half-truths. Ambiguity. This is exactly what is going to get you sacked, you know. Your beautiful idealism. Do you even know who you work for?" He judges it is safe to let go of Alex's arm. "We don't just lie. We kill people. I make things, Alex, that kill people."

"To keep others safe," says Alex, without conviction.

"Yes," says Q. "You want to get sacked, don't you."

Alex turns, places their palms together.

"Maybe you should just fuck your supervisor," says Q.

It's the other way around as usual, and as usual it's a rare thrill, to hold down someone so much stronger than him.

***************

Edinburgh is a good choice for a mathematician, thinks Q, idly doctoring Alex's exit paperwork. Close enough that Five can keep an eye, far enough from Cambridge, that nest of half-retired spooks, and God know it's not as if Q objects to the occasional dirty Scottish weekend.

He wonders how long it will take for some long-fingered postgraduate in jeans and thick sweaters to take his place, skimming rocks with Alex in the North Sea, telling him secrets. Someone with nothing to do with the Service, that would suit Alex. Q glances at the video he has going, a loop of his favorite bastard stripping off in a hotel room in Turkey. Perhaps being ignored a bit has done him some good. Q hacks into 007's personal mobile and sets it to play Adele at top volume. He puts his feet on his desk and closes his eyes.


End file.
